


Love In Every Stitch

by dreamerbydawn



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Found Family, M/M, Team as Family, mortality angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:26:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26428588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamerbydawn/pseuds/dreamerbydawn
Summary: In which Andy is on bed rest after a mission gone wrong, and knits ugly scarves. It is entirely Joe and Nicky's fault.Also known as, mortality contemplation and Andy learning that the best way to say goodbye, was one stitch at a time.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 22
Kudos: 150





	Love In Every Stitch

Andromache the Scythian is no stranger to pain. She has been gutted, tortured, and killed in every possible way humanity could conceive; but in all her six thousand years of walking this earth, pain has only ever been a sharp flare of unbearable agony that ceased the moment the ordeal ended.

This lingering after effect, it’s new. The feeling of soreness in every muscle stubbornly refusing to recede no matter how many deep breaths she took, the dull prevalent ache she feels seeping into her very bones and remaining there for hours, she doesn’t know what to do with these sensations.

In some ways, it feels good to know her body is as beaten and bruised as her soul, that the scars in her heart are now etched into her skin. It feels less like she’s a lie. It feels like her body has given up on holding her broken spirit inside, like those jagged edges finally cut through skin and are now ripping her apart from the inside.

She welcomes the pain.

She hates the pain.

She knows that the drugs in her system are dulling her senses, but they don’t lessen the fact that she’s trapped in her own body, helpless to twitch even a finger, mind hazy and body heavy. 

Her recollection isn’t perfect now. She knows she was in Catalan with Nile, they had a job that blew up spectacularly in their faces. Remembers coming to in what must have been an ambulance, remembers being hooked to several machines, but the world faded out after that and by the time it came back, she was already stuck staring at a hospital ceiling. 

Opening her eyes a second time isn’t going to change anything, there will still be tubes attached to her, her broken leg will still be in a cast and elevated enough that it’s in her line of sight, and the white of her surroundings will threaten to envelop her. So she keeps them stubbornly shut. 

Instead, she tries to take deep breaths in an effort to center herself, maybe discern her surroundings, gain some awareness.

“ – Not two years ago”

Joe. The familiar cadence of his voice is the first thing she registers, even if the language takes a moment longer to parse through in her slowed brain.

“You know as well as I, she wouldn’t have stopped then either hayati. She only needed some time” Nicky’s response carries his usual certainty, even if it is still in that garbled mix of languages they have retained from their first century of life. 

Those specific dialects of Tounsi and Liguarian have long died in the minds of the general civilization, but it has remained a steady backdrop of murmurs in her life for close to a millennia now, and it has always been soothing. A thousand times she has gone to sleep with the lull of their voices beside her, always careful to be kept low enough to not disturb, but loud enough that she still caught the discussion. 

Now though, the knowledge that she herself is the topic of conversation makes her wish she couldn’t understand every word.

“She wasn’t throwing herself like this at every injustice Nicolo” Joe sounds as vehement as always, his words carrying forcefully, even though she is sure Nicky is sitting close enough to touch.

“It is her death amore mio, she is free to seek it how she desires” There is a defeat in Nicky's tone that Andromache does not want to acknowledge is because of her. She wants the pain in his voice to not touch her heart, but like every other time, it hits true and deep when he sighs “And we know she desires it”

She swallows hard, because it is true. She is tired and she truly does desire an end to all this. The last few centuries she has spent alternating between desperate searches for Quynh, and desperate searches for an end. She has made no secret of either. Her only regret each time is this, the pain she causes them when she pushes them away repeatedly.

“It is almost here, so close and so real. Why hurry to throw herself at it now?” Joe’s voice is desperate, emotions clearly overwhelming him, and in response, her own heart stutters. For a second she wonders if he knows it's not that she is eager to leave him behind, it is that the world has taken too much. She is running on empty and she has nothing left to give, not even to the two people that love her most on this earth. 

“What would you rather Yusuf?” Nicky is asking in response, and she can imagine him holding his hands out in a gesture of helplessness “She deserves a warrior's death does she not?”

There is a silence that follows, weighted with all the things they're unwilling to say and Andromache feels like she is suffocating in their pain. It makes her want to tell them, ' _i'm going to be free, don't mourn me'_ but she knows it isn't fair to ask that of them.

Their grief is familiar to her. She already knows Joe will sketch her from memory over and over for years on end, too scared of forgetting any detail. That Nicky will softly sing her favorite songs until his voice dies on him and he can't speak. She knows they'll spend a decade travelling to all her favorite places and then the next one running from anywhere that held ghosts of the past. They will tell her story to people in little ways. _'My sister used to love this'_ they will tell the shopkeeper at a market, _'you're lucky Andromache is not here'_ they will tell the fools that get in their crosshairs. They will carry her in their hearts the same as they do Quynh. 

“I cannot imagine her death. I cannot imagine a world without her Nico”

The words make her squeeze her eyes shut tighter,. Her heart is heavy with the knowledge that he is crying. It makes her want to reach out, just as much as it makes her want to flinch away. She had hoped her ending would hurt them less, for it is not eternal torment like Quynh's, but perhaps that's wishful thinking. 

“Amore mio, please, not yet. There will be time for grief later” Nicky shushes, and Andromache knows the shuffle she is hearing is Nicky gathering Joe in his arms.

“We need time now, _with_ her" Joe's words are muffled, no doubt spoken buried in Nicky's shoulder "We still cannot find Quynh, and now we're losing Andromache. What use are we Nicolo if we cannot keep our family safe?”

She’s glad that the two of them are too wrapped up in each other to notice the tears that slip down her cheek. Once again, a part of her wants to speak, she wants to tell them that looking for Quynh and looking out for her, it was never their job. She was responsible for them, just like she had been responsible for Quynh.

In her mind, they are still very much the young, overeager, too noble for their own good, _children_ who are not even a full millennia old. 

She can still remember with perfect clarity, their first time in China on their journey east. The two of them trailing her and Quynh, Joe asking three dozen questions about everything under the sun, and Nicky drinking in each new city with awe and curiosity and bright eyed wonder, the two of them so very eager to take in everything new. She remembers the joy from those days like it is the warmth of the summer sun in the most bitter of winters. 

She knows that they’ve both lost a lot of faith in humanity after losing Quynh, knows their family isn't the same, but she wants to tell them not so much has changed that she isn’t still the one making the calls. It’s not their responsibility.

“She could have died when Booker shot her" The gentleness of Nicky's reminder does nothing to undercut the stab of pain "And we never would have had a chance to say goodbye. Every day we have now is the blessing Joe, how can we ask for more?" 

It was true that none of them had ever anticipated this. 

But every day they’ve called her to check in, every day they’ve offered one reason or another to join her, every day they’ve invited her to their safe house _'because she wouldn’t believe what Nicky was cooking today'_ , every day that they’ve been trying to hold on.

Also, every day she has resented for not dying a quick death the way Lykon had, every day she has felt irritated by her own limitations, every day she has rolled her eyes and snapped at them and told them _'no she was not dead yet'_ and asked them to stop coddling her, only to get a call again the next day. 

She adds it to the list of regrets she has, tries to stay quiet and allow the two of them the time to pull themselves together. She waits for the tell tale sign of Joe's chair scraping as he pushes back properly into his own seat. 

“Fantasies of Andy knitting in her old age were never coming true huh?” Joe asks, forced lightness in his tone and Andy barely manages to suppress a snort at that. 

“It is perhaps for the best that she not make any scarves Joe” Nicky answers without missing a beat, and already she knows where this is going. She recognized the teasing lilt to his tone easily, and it's blatantly obvious he’s thinking of that time in Bangladesh four centuries ago.

It makes her want to reach out and smack him. 

“How bad can it be? It involves needles. She’s good with sharp things” Joe’s playing along now, like he was not there for the embroidery fiasco, like he doesn’t know exactly how bad she is when asked to make designs. At least he remembers she’s capable of killing him with it, she’d hate to have to move just to refresh his memory.

“She’s also colour blind, and you would have to pretend that green and orange don’t clash” Nicky adds, no hint of the irony of his own color blindness present in his voice.

It makes Joe laugh, the sound echoing through the room, and she thinks Quynh would have laughed with him, those two were always despairing at Andy and Nicky having no taste for finery. She knows Nicky's probably fighting a smile and despite everything else, Andromache feels her lips twitch. 

“She’d never have the patience to finish a scarf anyway” Joe finally decides, Nicky’s sound of agreement only riling her up further. They both know she's awake. 

“Assholes” She says, her throat parched and the words sounding hoarse even to her own ears.

And just like that, both of them are jumping up to get in her line of sight, concern and relief warring in their expressions. She motions for the water with the hand that is not hooked up, and immediately, Joe fetches her a glass, carefully tipping it against her lips even as Nicky is spilling out words of comfort to her in rapid fire Italian.

All the teasing is forgotten, and all the grief is hidden away where it can't touch her. Now there is nothing else in their eyes but endless kindness and abiding love. 

It reminds Andromache that this is what she had been running from. She can tell herself all she wants that it was because she thought they'd be insufferable, hovering around her over-protectively. But, the truth was always there, waiting for her as patiently as they did. 

She could spend time with Nile, the young woman was only a star pupil to her weary but fond mentor. She could say goodbye to Booker, because he was a treasured and beloved friend, but one who understood well that the last time was the last time. There would be no attempts to hold on. 

It was different with Joe and Nicky, because these are her little brothers. 

They had come into her life only two centuries after Lykon's death, and had embraced Quynh and her as family like it was the most natural thing to do. In a time where they had been hurting, Joe and Nicky had brought light and life and laughter. They'd teased and annoyed and gotten underfoot plenty, they'd quarreled and sulked and wheedled her into changing her mind. They'd learned everything she had been willing to teach, and they'd fought loyally by her side. And later, when Quynh had been ripped from them, they had fallen apart right beside her. 

In the worst centuries of her life, they've been the unwavering support she could count on, weathering her rage and grief and dismissal with quiet grace and returning it with only love and support. Leaving them behind feels like a betrayal on its own, but not having any words for them, that's worse. 

After over 900 years she, at once, has too much to say to them and nothing at all. 

She wants to say, _'remember that house in Cyprus? That is the happiest I ever remember being'_ and _'thank you for always being what I needed'_. She wants demand promises of them, promises of _'put yourself first, stay safe'_ and _'keep your light, always'_. Most of all, she wants them to know that they've become the best men she knows, wants to tell them _'i'm so proud of both of you'_. 

But the words are not enough to encompass it all, the hundred languages she speaks don't offer her anything. 

For now, all she can do is to let them hover and fuss about her for the rest of the evening. 

If, a few days later, she asks Nile to buy her some wool and needles to knit, and their baby immortal looks at her like she has lost her mind, Andy cannot do more than shrug it off.

If Joe laughs till he cries when he first sees her on her hospital bed, surrounded by the ugliest shades of yarn that Nile could find upon Andy’s specific request, Andy can only pretend to keep a straight face.

If Nicky grins at her and promptly buys her three dozen books with patterns and makes specific requests that are beyond ridiculous, Andy has no qualms in stabbing at him – ~~non lethally~~ – with her needles.

If she knits after every time she lashes out at one of them from the frustration of being bound to a bed for weeks on end, her apology is accepted and she only gets the gentlest of kiss on her cheek afterwards. 

If, on the day she’s finally able to get rid of her crutches, she makes her way to Joe and Nicky’s bedroom and throws two of the ugliest scarves ever made at their faces, she only hopes they understand all the things she doesn’t have the words to say.

_She will see them on the other side._

_She will be there, ready and waiting to show them the world beyond, just as she did this one._

_And until then, this was goodbye_

**Author's Note:**

> Scarf feels are now a thing, anyone agree?


End file.
